Aiding looters with foreign accounts approval

Posted by admin Latest Politics Sunday, December 22nd, 2013

IN a wrong-headed move, the House of Representatives has initiated the process to legalise the operation of foreign bank accounts by public officers. Despite public misgivings about it, a bill to this effect scaled through the second reading on November 19. One of its sponsors, Bamidele Faparusi, argued that the current law is “weak and ineffective.” Therefore, to amend the Code of Conduct Bureau and Tribunal Act, 2004 to give a public officer leave to open such an account will banish the secrecy associated with it, he reasoned. He is dead wrong! As the House Deputy Leader, Leo Ogor, later described it, “It is standing logic on its head.” Rather than tame the corruption tide, it will go geometric.

But Faparusi was right in highlighting the brazenness with which corrupt public officers operate these illegal accounts. He said, “Today, people are operating such accounts by proxy or even in the open because they know that nothing will happen.” This is a serious indictment of the anti-graft agencies: the Code of Conduct Bureau, Economic and Financial Crimes Commission and the Independent Corrupt Practices and other Related Offences Commission. Under the watch of these bodies, the public treasury is routinely being plundered by public officers and their confederates outside the government.

It is quite troubling that laws put in place to address this rot are subverted by both the culprits and agents of the state. A clear example is how 136,957 public officers nationwide failed to declare their assets for three years running under the current democratic dispensation. Elected or appointed, these public officers occupy positions of public trust. According to recent media reports, the chairman of CCB, Sam Saba, has threatened to prosecute these errant officers. But where was he or the CCB when they spurned the mandatory directive given public officers to declare their assets? It was not for nothing that the framers of our constitution included assets declaration as a requirement for public service. Obviously, defiant officers have skeletons in their cupboards.

The argument of advocates of the right to foreign accounts by public officers that the extant law against it is weak, is not sufficient to open the floodgates. What is demanded of a responsive parliament in a country like ours where corruption is commonplace is to strengthen all legal instruments against the vice; not to further enfeeble it. The Aminu Tambuwal-led House, therefore, should not invite opprobrium to itself with this indiscretion. The CCB Act Cap 56 Laws of the Federation of Nigeria, 1990, which the House seeks to amend, is also in the Fifth Schedule Part (3) of the 1999 Constitution. It stipulates that the President, Vice-President, Governors and their deputies, ministers, state commissioners, federal and state legislators “and such other public officers or persons as the National Assembly may by law prescribe shall not maintain or operate a bank account in any country outside Nigeria.”

Since this is also a constitutional imperative, the protagonists of the amendment should have realised that their action is a futile journey. It is trite that any law, which is inconsistent with the constitution, to the extent of its inconsistency, is null and void and of no effect. This should have been an important warning to the purveyors of this graft-friendly bill.

There are pressing challenges before the House, which it has not addressed. On November 21, it ordered yet another investigation into the activities of Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, following its discovery that it failed to remit $13.9 billion oil revenue into the Federation Account, out of the $20.9 billion made between January and August this year. Yet, the House is invested with enormous constitutional powers to make the NNPC accountable and transparent. This is where to direct its energy.

Indeed, corruption is in auto-drive in Nigeria! It is this sorry state of affairs that has seen the country’s profile rise steadily in the global hall of infamy. Begin with the latest: the 2013 Transparency International Corruption Perception Index report ranks the country 144th out of 177 countries it surveyed. This represents a negative progression from the 2012 outlook. With its $182 billion siphoned between 2000 and 2009, according to Global Financial Integrity, a United States-based corruption watchdog, Nigeria is ranked eighth among 20 countries with the highest illicit financial outflows. The situation is very bad already; but it could be out of control with a seemingly legislative carte blanche to public officers to operate foreign accounts.

If the House is concerned about the festering of foreign accounts despite the law against it, as the promoters of the amendment to the CCB Act want us to believe, it should take its relevant committees with oversight powers on the EFCC, ICPC and CCB to task. Much of illicit capital flights to foreign banks pass through our local banks. The Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit and the Special Unit against Money Laundering were established to nip this illegality in the bud. Under the Act, it is obligatory for banks to alert the EFCC through automation on transactions that fall within the “suspicious thresholds.” But do they scrupulously comply? And if not, why? The lawmakers should solve this puzzle, instead of engaging in shadow-boxing.

-Punchwp_posts